


Battle Braids

by JoCarthage



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, Feminist Themes, Hair Braiding, Hurt/Comfort, Pack Feels, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 01:31:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1286182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoCarthage/pseuds/JoCarthage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Allison’s head lay bleeding in Lydia’s lap, hair loose. The hunter who shot her crept closer to the fallen log behind which they’d taken cover. Lydia held her body over the other woman, careful not to jostle the bolt still in her shoulder or touch her bleeding forehead. The hunter fired a bolt just over the visible sliver of Lydia’s auburn hair and she hunched closer, but couldn’t move without Allison, and Allison was weak with blood-loss. Breath hushed, body compressed, Lydia traced out blood and leaves and chunks of dirt from her friend’s hair, unwinding knots with a shaking finger. She whispered over and over again:</p><p>“This will never happen again.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Braids

Allison’s head lay bleeding in Lydia’s lap, hair loose. The hunter who shot her crept closer to the fallen log behind which they’d taken cover. Lydia held her body over the other woman, careful not to jostle the bolt still in her shoulder or touch her bleeding forehead. The hunter fired a bolt just over the visible sliver of Lydia’s auburn hair and she hunched closer, but couldn’t move without Allison, and Allison was weak with blood-loss. Breath hushed, body compressed, Lydia traced out blood and leaves and chunks of dirt from her friend’s hair, unwinding knots with a shaking finger. She whispered over and over again:

“This will never happen again.”

Lydia heard Scott’s roar and chanced a glance up. She caught the hunter’s wide mouth as the beta took a chunk out of his shoulder. The teen sliced his throat open with a wide-spread claw and ran back to the main fight on the other side of the hill.

Battle moving away from them, Lydia raised herself up to assess the damage to the woman in her lap. She shucked her cream-colored sweater and folded it to stabilize the bolt in Allison’s shoulder. This was supposed to have been an after-school reconnaissance trip, and an unscheduled one at that. They were so unprepared. 

Lydia could see Allison keeping her pain to herself, but as she smoothed back her hair it was clear in the crinkles of her closed eyes.

“You’re going be just fine, just keep awake, girl, just keep awake.”  
  
“Okay, Lyds, I will,” and there it was, that fluttering, sassy-ass smile. 

Lydia kept smoothing her hair back and then some worry-pattern from early girlhood used her hands to start braiding. She kept a monologue about how she was going to make sure this never happened again, voice quiet and catching, but her fingers moved with confidence. 

Once most of the snarls were out of the hair she could reach, she started separating it into three plaits, then braiding them back away from Allison’s face. It was an awkward angle, and the braids wouldn’t lie flat, but she got them away from the wound. She started in on the next temple, using her forearm to keep pressure on Allison’s head-wound.

“We’re going to get you to Melissa’s and get you fixed up. You probably won’t even scar,”

“It would be pretty badass if I did though, Lyds.”

Lydia knew she should have chuckled, but it just didn’t seem possible. She heard a cry—it sounded like Scott. She leaned lower and kept talking, detailing what they would do to any survivor of this battle. She didn’t have anything to tie the braids off with so she made the braid itself into an overhand knot. 

She looked at her handiwork, her low threats pausing for a moment. She hadn’t gotten all of the leave and twigs out and they were spiking up out of Allison’s braids. With the blood and the paleness of Allison’s face and her wide wandering eyes, she thought the wildness they brought evened her back out to her usual levels of badassery.

Just as she was moving her hand down Allison’s cheek again, trying to keep her centered, she heard a spluttered human scream as the last hunter died, choking on his own blood. She called out:  
  
“Allison’s hurt, she needs Melissa.”

In an instant, two concerned were-faces and a uniquely-Stiles-face were peering out over the log at her, and then Scott was loading her up on his back and sprinting towards civilization.

—

Growing up, Allison had a deal with her mother. She could grow her hair as long as she wanted to, if she never screamed when they combed it. She never did, though the tugging hurt and the plastic bobbles smacked her in the face when she bowed in karate and the bobby pins for sparring always scraped her scalp. She never whined or complained, and her hair grew long and black and her mother braided it every morning, twisting ribbons through her waves.

—

They were sitting in a huddled semi-circle around Allison’s hospital bed when she awoke. The nurse’s hadn’t undone Lydia’s braids, but in the past 6 hours they’d gotten frayed. Her eyes startled for a moment at the strange sounds and smells of the room, but Scott’s hand tightened on her arm and black runnels came racing towards his heart. Her breathing slowed, but her eyes kept searching, even as he took some of what the oxy couldn’t.

Then her eyes found Lydia’s.

“Lyds,” she coughed out, and Lydia moved to the edge of her chair.

“Lyds, we get ‘em?” Lydia reached up the tuck a messy braid behind Allison’s ear:

“Yeah, girl, we did.” Allison smiled and her eyes drifted closed, eased by Scott’s hand on her arm but her face towards Lydia.

—

They wheeled her out a few hours later, the cost-benefit of staying in the hospital having worn through, and Allison’s hands kept drifting up to her twin braids. She undid the overhand knot and redid it, even as Scott and Stiles talked over her head about their fears, where they would need to bury the bodies, who they needed to update on what had happened.

They reached their cars and Lydia took over—neither boy had a working ride of his own and Derek was still on clean-up. She helped them get Allison into Lydia’s musty bucket-seat, then they set off at a jog.

The door shut and Lydia turned, pulling the braid from Allison’s worrying fingers. It was still chunked with dried blood and leaves.

“Your house or mine?” She asked.

“Yours. I don’t want to explain this to Dad until the bruising goes down.” Allison leaned against the door, head gingerly on the window. Lydia huffed in agreement and started up the car. She threw on the radio and heard the wheeze of the Boss’s _Nebraska_. She nodded and started to drive.

They arrived and Lydia eased Allison’s arm over her shoulder, taking more than an even amount of her weight as she stumbled along. They moved through her parent’s professionally-managed front lawn, Lydia propping Allison up against the doorpost to get her keys out.

Door open, Allison tried to walk through it under her own power. On the first stumble Lydia muttered: “Stubborn,” and scooped her arm up to distribute her weight between them. Allison smiled and replied “You know it,” in a whisper.

Lydia considered stopping at the sweeping white couch her parent’s interior designer had flung into the only room wide enough for its expanse, but the thought of cleaning Allison’s blood out of it involved more emotions and cleaning products than she wanted to interact with today. She turned the weaving woman towards the back hallway, leaning her away from the walls of family frames.

“You’re soft,” Allison muttered, head nearly buried in Lydia’s shoulder and absolutely not looking where they were going.

Lydia hipped the door open and pivoted Allison to sitting on the bed. She flopped over, burrowing under the pillow with the top of her head. Lydia got the family first aid kit out from under her bed and checked the bandage on Allison’s forehead while her eyes were closed and she’d started to drowse. It was doing fine, the right color and not too much.

Lydia wet a washcloth in the bathroom and returned, to find Allison’s arm flung over her eyes. _Not as asleep as I’d thought_. She pulled the girl’s hand away, and began to clean her off, over her nails, between her fingers. She went to the kitchen to get a hot bowl of water and kept going, moving in slow, soft strokes.

She only touched those parts exposed by Allison’s black school clothes, but they were dirty enough. Allison twisted fitfully at first, but then soothed. Lydia scooted up, settling Allison’s head in her lap, and began slowly easing the dirt off her face, avoiding the bandage.

That done, she considered her hair. Allison was still dozing, but her hand had crept up to hold onto Lydia’s wrist. At first, she thought it was a sign to stop, but Allison pushed her wrist back and forth in a _move, dammit_ motion, and so Lydia leaned over to pull her hairbrush from her bedside table. 

She began by unraveling the braids in Allison’s hair, then brushing them off. She crinkled her nose at the detritus that was now littering her lavender bedspread, but figured if the worst she got out of this was a hefty load of laundry, she wasn’t too bad off.

Braids undone, Lydia started pulled the brush through, starting with the ends and working her way up. Gentler than she ever was for herself, she caught a tangle that was tightening rather than subsiding and she set the brush aside to ease it apart with her fingers. 

And so she worked, reaching everything up but the back third of Allison’s hair. For that, she scooted herself under her, lifting her torso. She settled her snuggled-weight against her body, letting her head tip forward just enough to brush the back third of her hair. Allison’s breath stayed steady the entire time, sometimes catting into her touch.

Lydia could feel the dirt pinging out of Allison’s hair and onto her top, but kept going until the hair in her hands was smooth. Then she began to brush her hair back from her face until she had a good handful. She wondered for a brief moment if this was doing more to keep Allison’s from getting the rest she needed, but when she paused the other girl head-bumped into her shoulder. With a secret smile, Lydia made quick work of a french braid into a braid and then a herringbone down her back.

When she finished, she tipped the other girl onto her side and lay down beside her, letting the slow rhythm of their breathing lull them.

—

Allison woke to a warm pressure behind her back. Reaching down, she brought the hand resting on her belly-button to her blurry eyes. _Gunmetal-gray nails, probably not Scott._ She brought her hand to touch the bandage on her forehead, then the tightness on her scalp brought her fingers to a tight french braid. Smiling, Allison eased herself out from under Lydia’s arm, letting her keep hogging the middle of the bed. She began to unwind the braid as she wobbled towards the shower, smiling to the mirror at the waves it brought to her hair.

—

“That will never happen again.” Lydia’s voice was sharp in the round-backed diner booth.  
  
“We need a system in place for identifying hunters before they come after us. Allison—” the woman had been watching her friend’s sharply-lined red lips but she managed to snap her eyes up to her eyes.

“Yes?” She said, startle-response only a little too obvious.

“Can your Dad get us access to that information in a systemic way?” Lydia’s face set as mountain snow.

“I can try—but we might want to cross-reference it with Stiles’ Dad’s access to boarder-patrol record, so we can catch families flying in from abroad.”

“Is that common?” Stiles asked, head resting against the wall of the diner booth, hands tapping a rhythm known only to himself on the table.

Allison was getting ready to give a lecture of hunter culture, when Lydia held up a red-nailed hand. 

“Allison, Stiles, can you get together to form a proposal for how we’ll do this? We’ll want a complete database of hunters rated by how likely they are to come after us. Maybe an algorithm searching for the most commons crimes hunters end up with on their records. The likelihood ranking could include any local reportage that might have gotten their attention.” She turned to face Derek:

“I need you to network with other packs, to borrow protocols and assess potential threats. How do they handle this?”

Derek closed his eyes and read aloud off the backs of his eyelids for 10 minutes. He gave them the security protocols for the half-dozen packs he and Laura had home-stayed with after the fire. Lydia noted all of them on her white iPhone, thumbs tapping almost too fast for Allison’s human eyes to trace.

When he finished Lydia said: “Right.” Then a long pause, while Allison waited for her to continue. It looked like she was rereading what she wrote. Scott was just about to break in, when Lydia snapped her eyes up, scanning the group and saying again: “Right.”

She looked each member of the pack in the eyes, staring until each sat up straight, bodies active and ready. Even Stiles was still.

“They all think we are prey. We have been prey.” Her hand reached under the table to grip Allison’s wrist. “We will no longer be prey. Accept that, and we will control what is about to happen to us.”

She clicked her phone off and stood, then dangled her hand down towards Allison’s fingers:  
  
“Let’s go.”

Allison stared at them, and she could feel Scott’s eyes hot on her cheek. She let that settle in her mind, and then raised her hand to trail her fingers up and into Lydia’s. She found an anchor in her skin and bone stronger than she’d anticipated. She rose at a small tug, and followed as they walked out. The pack watched and, knowing this, Allison let a small smile tug onto her lips as she walked out.

—

Allison was at Lydia’s for a final afternoon of fight-prep. They took the time they had to stretch, to breath, to go over their tactics and their roles. And to weave their battle braids.

Lydia had ordered a book of images of female fighters, from lady knights, to female olympic wrestlers, to MMA fighters and commandos. She lay on her lavender bed, heels kicking, while she flipped through their pages.

“This one.” She said, tapping her shorter, blood-red nails on the face of a woman with intersecting loops binding her long hair tight to her head. The caption said she was a Celtic queen preparing for battle.  
  
Allison kneed over on the bedspread, abandoning her nearly-honed knife set to peer down into the book. Their hair mixed around the pages as it fell before each of their faces. Absently, she trailed her fingers through their hair to touch the picture.

“Ok.” She said, moving to sit behind Lydia’s back. She had a wrist-full of strong black elastics, a pocketful of bobby pins.

She fell into an easy rhythm once she figured out the pattern, and Lydia didn't complain at her tugging and pulling. Instead, she rehearsed her speech. When Allison finished, Lydia stood and shook her head. When not a tendril sprung free she began to head-bang, until Allison tumbled off the bed with laughter.

Allison’s turn now, Lydia pulled together a simpler, tight french-braid better suited to her hair’s whisps. Lydia got the base in and then stopped. She moved from behind the other woman, walking over to the open weapons’ case. She came back with 2 stiletto knives, still in their sheathes, and a few thongs of leather that had started life as arm-guards and been cannibalized. She worked them into Allison’s hair along with the major strands of her braids, so she could draw them from over her ears.

When she was done tugging and looping and pinning and prodding, she reached her hand out and lead Allison to the mirror. They stood together, sunlight streaming over their shoulders, dark and bright hair locked in and immovable. Allison with hilts shining over her ears and Lydia with a monarch’s bearing, they looked like queens from no fairy-tale they’d ever read.

Then the sun shifted and with the softening of the light Lydia’s hand curled around Allison’s, and they became in their mirror just what they were: two teenaged girls. They saw in each other’s eyes that these faces were the last their enemies would ever see.

—

The pack met at the edge of the reserve at dusk, a mile’s rough hike from where they’d tracked down the hunters’ RV down on disused access road. They spoke quietly, respectful of the graveyard they were about to create. 

Scott and Derek raced out first, silently circling in opposite directions. They had dim-screened-phones to share any changes to their plan and for the broadcast. Lydia and Allison walked with cloth-muted boots down one path while Stiles and Chris took another. They held hands through their matte-black leather gloves in the wandering dark, and even their breath was in sync. 

At the first check-point they paused, listening, heard nothing. Lydia checked her phone and then gripped Allison’s biceps. She nodded and drew her bow, notching but not pulling back her arrow. Lydia unclasped the snaps holding in the smoke-bomb, the sedative dart, and the taser from her belt. She nodded and they started in.

They caught the first glimpse of the hunters’ fire moments later, and behind that the flash of Scott’s eyes from around the corner of the trailer. Lydia released Allison’s hand and stepped behind a largish oak tree took a deep breath. Allison slipped in her ear plugs and Lydia began to scream.

Allison winced, but as soon as the hunters jolted from their low-chairs around the fire she tossed in the timed flash-bang and squeezed her eyes shut, covering them with her hands. Through her strobing pink-lids she could see the chaotic flashes and the muffled screams of their prey. She counted to 3 and opened her eyes, already starting to run into the overrun campsite.

There were men stumbled and crawling around her, and she took a moment to kick one of them in the head as she vaulted up the external ladder of their camper and took her archer’s perch. She notched an arrow and drew down, selecting the most-aware target. A bear of a man, he was fumbling behind his back for his sidearm. She took him in the throat.

The next was a younger man, maybe their age, maybe Derek’s. He was on his feet but still bent over, hands on his ears, shouting something, pointing towards Lydia’s hiding place, eyes still closed. She took him in the calf and he fell, his screaming coming to her ears in gouts as her ears tried to adapt to Lydia’s scream and the plugs. 

She winged another as he drew down a machete from his back-sheath and looked murder at Scott, who was in full beta and digging his claws into the chest of a man Chris’s age. At her shout Scott yanked his blood-soaked paw free and sliced the tips of his claws through the attacker’s throat.

Allison surveyed the scene. 15 men had slept, napped, or kept watch here 5 minutes ago. Now, 5 were dead, 3 on the ground. She saw one start to look up, ducked as he saw her. Chris’s throwing-knife took him in the shoulder. She lay on her belly, bow parallel to the ground, and sank 3 arrows into the falling man’s heart. As she was confirming her kill, she saw the smallest of the men, maybe Chris’s age, crawling on his belly towards where Lydia’s voice was aching and echoing over the valley.

She aimed and hit him in the ass, and as he curled around his pain she stuck him in the eye. Derek was working his way from the outside-in, cutting throats and confirming kills. Stiles worked the other direction, and she saw him bending over the smaller one she’d caught in the leg, hand on his throat, bearing down, shouting something. She saw something loom behind him and was about to take the shape out, when it materialized into Scott, beta contortions melting away. 

He put his hand on Stiles’ where he was choking the young man. Stiles thrust himself away, only to watch Scott kick the coughing man onto his stomach and kneel into his back as he twisted in pain. Scott pulled one of his arms up behind his back and the youth on the ground kicked out but couldn’t get a purchase. Stiles caught his other arm and together he and Scott bound them behind his back. He was still too stunned or scared to scream anymore, but Scott shoved a cut strip of an older dead man’s t-shirt into his mouth to dissuade him.

Allison took a final survey. There were 12 unmoving, 3 men clearly alive and  bound in various states of lucidity. Lydia was pacing to the edge of the firelight, flames echoed in her eyes and the curves of her battle braids, highlighting the blades of her cheeks.

Her eyes held not the warmth but the conviction of a forrest fire. They lifted to Allison’s perch and connected. She gave a sharp nod and the two werewolves each hoisted a man onto their shoulders while Chris and Stiles split the young man between them. They began the walk back to the truck. Lydia stopped at the edge of the firelight and yanked a piece of matte metal off—a cellphone glued to a spike shoved deep into the tree’s bark. She let it get a good look at her face and then turned it to survey the blood-swept dirt and bodies.

Allison secured her bow and crossed to the opposite side of the circle from where Lydia stalked, bringing the phone to the faces of the dead. She extricated her own phone from the tree where Scott had lodged it and began a counter-clockwise circle, mirroring Lydia’s own progress. When they’d documented each face, each wound, they faced each other, camera’s recording over the top of the fire.

The flickering light left the skin of their faces black and then lit by uneven spikes of color. Their red lips were black in the dark light, but their eyes held fiery murder.

They took a breath, slow and loud. In sync they said:

“This, to any who threaten the Hale pack. This, to any who set unpermitted foot into our territory. This, to any hunter, human or creature who seeks to undo our balance.”

Another deep breath and then each teen smiled. Well, bared her teeth:

“We bring Death to any who disturb us.”

Then they shut off the livefeed.

—

The matriarchs of hunter families from around the world sat in silence as the livestream went dark. Hours earleir, they had not expected to receive an anonymous email linking them to a dark net video-streaming site. The first comment appeared, from Italy:  
  
 _Was that real?_

No one dared answer. The next, from Saudi Arabia:

_Are those girls human?_

No one replied. Then:

 _This is the Alpha of the Hale Pack. This video was taken on my orders. The men whose corpses lie cooling in the forrest came with the purpose of killing myself and my pack. Proof_.

The video went live again. It was the youth Stiles had been choking.

A mother in Nevada gasped low and tight, watching her son struggle against the ripped and bloodstained t-shirt in his mouth. Her sisters  stood behind her, gripping the knives on their belts and waiting.

An unseen hand pulled the shirt from his mouth as the shot zoomed out. He was unbound, sitting in the back of a pick-up truck.

“Why did you come to Beacon Hills?”

The voice was young, and the video pulled back to reveal a whippy, pale teenager with a buzz cut holding the rag of a shirt. His dark hair not nearly as dark as his eyes or the gun in his hands.

“Fuck you.”

The captive’s face blurred, and when the video stabilized he had a cut across his cheekbone and the gun was moving out of the camera view.

“Your mother is watching. Tell her why you came.”

The youth’s eyes widened and then steeled.

“We came to kill the Alpha. No dogs in our claimed territory.”

The dark-haired teen’s voice was as sweet as honey: “But we are not in your territory.”

The youth froze and his head dropped. Then it yanked back up, the youth gripped it and forced him to look into the camera, hissing in his ear:

“ _Is it?_ ”

The video feed went black.

Another comment: 

_This is the Hale Alpha. We will not bring war to any who offer peace. We will not grant peace to any who offer war._

No responses.

_This is your only warning._

The mother in Nevada reached for the keyboard, then pushed her sisters’ hands away as they tried to stop her.

 _I beg for my son’s life_.

No response.

—

Allison arrived to find the youth still alive, mouth stuffed again with the silencing t-shirt.

Her arm rested around Lydia’s waist, fingers working their way under her tight t-shirt. Her skin felt like she gone into and out of a hot sponge bath. She needed to be in her room, preferably with Lydia.

Lydia spoke to Derek: “The decision is yours, but you know my voice.”

Derek nodded. “He lives, as do the other men. They will confess to the murder of the others. Or they die.”

Stiles nodded and closed his laptop.

“We’ll keep them at Hale House until they’ve woken and healed enough to testify. I have enough to convince them. I’ve also privately emailed their families with this information. There will be a prison-break—those walls are clearly not up to code—and they will be back in Nevada by the end of next week.”

Lydia nodded and wrapped her fingers around Allison’s.

“Get some sleep everyone. This is just the beginning.”

—

The mother in Nevada curled around her computer, gasping in relief at the proof of life she’d just received. Rage for her dead brother burned in her heart, but the pure pragmatism of her role as clan leader sang out: _We’d attacked them when they were weak. We were wrong. They will hold their territory._

_For now._

—

Lydia laid Allison out on her bed, cream thighs spread, hair still held tight in her braids. Sucking a long line of marks into her side, over to the crest of her hip, fingers between her folds. There was no rush, no hunter glaring over their shoulders. They’d left the boys behind and hadn’t left any confusion as to what they were leaving to do.

Allison was still, her breathing controlled and sure. Lydia wanted to break that control, wanted to shatter her calm exterior into a puddle of want and quaking gasps. She slid a second finger through Allison’s folds just to hear the other woman gasp in anticipation.

She leaned down, her face drawing near to Allison’s secret scents and textures, before pressing her mouth to the place where her fingers where just brushing Allison’s insides. Allison jerked up, her hips staying flat but torso popping off the bed at the new sensation. Lydia kept pressing her closed mouth closer until she could feel her lips press against her teeth. She kept on, until her cheekbone was pressing into her Allison’s, the pinch tight.

Both were too close to the edge for any pain to feel wrong. Lydia let her tongue out, not in the quick lick she might have, but a full-tongued slurp. Allison’s hand was gripping her shoulder, nails digging in, and Lydia gave mercy, increasing her pressure around her clit, pressing and rubbing in as Allison bucked into her hand and mouth, coming with a jolt and a shock like she was being electrocuted.

As she breathed it out, Lydia crawled up her body, disengaging Allison’s clawed hand from her shoulder and weaving it between her own legs. She spread the woman’s hand flat between her thighs, using her own fingers to press Allison’s into her, rubbing until her juices covered their nails. With a hitched breath Allison resumed control of her hand, leaning up and over, pressing her mouth down onto Lydia’s while she pressed the tips of her fingers into her. Lydia howled at the contact, shoulders shimmying and hips nearly pushing Allison off. She finally threw a leg over and straddled Lydia’s knees to keep her from bucking off. She kept the pressure on, hand moving fast and sure.

Lydia was vocal but muffling herself with a forearm. Allison could see her taking teeth to herself and swooped down to capture those lips. Her kiss was full of teeth, her tongue sharp and filling the other girl’s mouth. Undeniable as an avalanche. 

Somewhere between the press of tongues and bodies and fingers Lydia started coming, hands locking behind Allison’s back and rolling them, hands pushing, wrestling for a grip, laughing at the struggle. They collapsed in a heap of exhausted flesh, each breath scented by the other’s body.

Moments and minutes later, Allison felt Lydia’s fingers in her hair, picking apart her braids. She relaxed her neck, letting it rest in the curve of Lydia’s stomach. There were tugs and slips of feeling as she took the braids down, as she worked out the knots and the slopes as they touched her head. She felt her hair slip over her ear, trailing between Lydia’s thighs. She kept her head still, eyes closed, feeling the movement and slow pace of Lydia’s fingers taking her apart in a another way.

Eventually, her hair was hand-picked apart, tresses laying down, unstressed and as clean as careful finger-combing could make them. Then she rolled over, letting the silk of their falling strands cover her face. She watched as the dark edges of her hair trailed over Lydia’s ribs and breasts. Her body arched up towards her as her hair trailed over his nipples. Then she captured her mouth, easing against her, sliding her thigh between Lydia’s thighs, sitting carefully on her leg. Mouth never leaving Lydia’s, she began to work her hands into her hair.

She worked and tugged and pulled, making space where there was none before, and the whole time exploring Lydia’s mouth, pushing in and sweeping her tongue when she hit a snarl, mixing up pain and pleasure in every way she could. 

It was a lot messier, but the tinges of pain just added a heat to her kisses. She worked her fingers under the braids, loosening their grip on her skull, and then worked a given strand out of its tri-braid. Then she unwound the remaining two braids and moved to the next. Once she’d removed every ounce of organization from Lydia’s hair, she lifted herself up, slowly watching her hair mingle with Lydia’s.

“We did right tonight.” There wasn't a moment of give in her voice, not a shade or shape of it. 

Lydia’s eyes held hers for a considering moment, and she gripped the back of her neck, pulling her into a toothy-kiss. Then she rolled her off and stood to get the light. The morning was almost dawning, and they needed to prepare for their next steps.

“Yes, we did right for the pack.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this for fem!slash February and just finished editing it. I usually have one or two songs that I listen to on a loop while writing, and they can add depth. Here they are:
> 
> http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=NwcOhOv4fho  
> http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=UkOKCWDJ4iA
> 
> The idea of battle braids came from a lovely Legolas/Gimli fic where they braid each other's hair that I'm trying to find again. Also, because I realized I'd written 25 fics and most of them had no women. Which, as a feminist, is a BAD THING. More on that here: http://its-you-i-cant-lose.tumblr.com/post/76698810620/so-im-trying-to-decide-what-ill-cosplay-as-i
> 
> Also, like the boy-boy sex I write, I have not had girl-girl sex, so, well, if I got anything basic wrong let me know in the sexiest terms possible in the comments. As a cis-girl, I think I've got it covered, but I'm willing to be over-ruled.
> 
> And the thing with braids: I like taking feminine-coded behaviors and interests (sewing, fashion, braids) and showing how they are badass (it's engineering and project management, it's the history and sociology of how we present ourselves, it's an incredibly practical way to mix-and-match your presentation based on circumstances). I like a lot of masculine-coded things, but I wanted to take creative action to show that feminine-coded things can be part of being a strong woman. Because, we've always been strong women, others are just starting to notice.


End file.
